Chapter 23: The Fifth Bar

The Strike Zone had a piano.

It stood against the back wall behind the shoe counter, an old brown upright with a cigarette burn on the lid.

A sign taped to it said "DO NOT LEAN DRINKS."

On Thursday Dot had pushed it twelve feet toward the stage herself.

"Rule says no props," she said, wiping her hands on her bowling shirt. "A piano isn't a prop. It's furniture that bites."

The room was fuller than I had ever seen it.

Word had gotten around about the showcase, and about the badger.

People had come to see the boy who had made a whole hall cry.

Mom, Dad and June sat in lane nine with the man who ate nachos.

He had pushed his tray into the middle for them.

I sat at the back, near the shoe counter, with a root beer.

I had promised myself I would do nothing.

Dot called the name from the stool in her flat bus-driver voice.

"Colin Halvorson. Piano. Two minutes."

My brother walked out of the dark.

He wore a plain white shirt buttoned to the neck, and he had chewed his cuticles raw again.

He sat down on the bench and moved it an inch closer, then back.

He looked at the room, and then at his hands.

"I'm going to play the Debussy," he said. "It's the one I couldn't finish at the gala."

Nobody made a sound.

He put his fingers on the keys.

The first four bars came out slow and clear, the same careful notes I had heard in the principal's office.

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